


Cigarette Kisses

by Acai



Series: Iwaoi Soulmate AU [1]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Graduation, Heavy Angst, I Blame Tumblr, M/M, Pining, Post-Graduation, Romantic Soulmates, Sad, Soulmate AU, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, That's it, Unrequited Love, Youtuber AU, but it's not like a coffee shop au, it's just sad, iwa-chan just has caffeine dependency, oikawa's a youtuber
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-21
Updated: 2016-08-21
Packaged: 2018-08-10 04:13:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7829995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Acai/pseuds/Acai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was funny how Iwaizumi had known Oikawa since they were seven, and yet Oikawa never knew Iwaizumi a day in his life. It was funnier how Iwaizumi knew his name was on Oikawa's wrist, and his on Oikawa's, yet Oikawa probably wouldn't have recognized him if they were to run into each other someplace. </p><p>It was funny how Oikawa would probably never know at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cigarette Kisses

**Author's Note:**

> Iwaizumi just needed to Suck It Up and Go Get His Man honestly. It was three AM and I blame Tumblr. 
> 
> ((Onnnn a side-note THANK to ailourophilic for talking about matsuhanaiwaoi with me and inspiring this shit post))
> 
> ((Note: My username did just change from @H0mestuck to @Acai. If this causes lots of trouble with links or such, I have the username saved and can easily switch back. Feel free to message me on Tumblr @Aobajosighs.))

When Iwaizumi was seven, a boy moved in across the street from him. He had brown hair that fell into his face and must have made it difficult to see. His mother had prodded him to go and meet their new neighbors, placing cookies in his hands and insisting that he make a good impression. The boy was never home, though. Iwaizumi saw him leave in the morning, return for several minutes throughout the day and then disappear off someplace else to who-knows-where.

It’s on the first day of school (Iwaizumi’s eight, now) that he realizes they’re in the same class. He learns the boy’s name is Oikawa Tooru and marvels at the prettiness of it. Of course, the name itself isn’t anything spectacular. The fact that it’s on Iwaizumi’s wrist in pretty little letters makes it lovely on its own, though.

And there it was, _Tooru,_ all loopy and printed so neatly that it looks like it’s not even really on Iwaizumi’s arm.

His mother explains to him that there’s more than one Tooru in the world, though. Iwaizumi knows that the boy must be the right Tooru--why else would the boy’s wrist say _Hajime_ in the same printed letters?

~ ~ ~ ~~ ~ ~ ~ ~

By the time that they’re both eleven they’ve been in the same class every other year and they’re all aware of the meaning of the name on their wrists. Oikawa Tooru is a popular boy, but he’s not social by choice. He joins clubs like volleyball and dates girls who ask (though Iwaizumi thinks it’s because he doesn’t know how to say no) and every knows him.

He’s got a little group of friends who he talks to by choice, but everybody else seems to filter in and out of the boy’s life without ever making an impact. Iwaizumi knows, of course, that if he were to go and talk to Oikawa that he would only have to say that he was the boy’s soulmate and he would (hopefully) captivate the boy’s attention.

A nagging part in his mind disagreed. Iwaizumi had done school projects with the other boy, they’d sat next to each other and they’d been lab partners once or twice. Oikawa Tooru was distracted, if nothing else. He obviously didn’t even know Iwaizumi’s name.

It’s not a problem to Iwaizumi. When you’re eleven nothing really is. He thinks that must just be how these things work--after all, everyone says you meet your soulmate when you’re an adult. This must be the reason that Oikawa Tooru doesn’t ever glance up from his sleeves long enough for Iwaizumi to see what color his eyes are.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Iwaizumi’s not so delusional by the time that they’re seventeen. Oikawa Tooru, who plays volleyball and dates girls and always smells like vanilla, lives a completely different life than Iwaizumi, who has never joined a club in his life and has never dated anyone and who doesn’t really smell like anything at all.

Iwaizumi’s not even sure how many times he’s walked up to Oikawa to say something, to say _hey, your name is on my wrist,_ before realizing with a stunning amount of certainty that Oikawa Tooru is a _stranger_ to him no matter how long they’ve been in the same classes.

Oikawa stared at his sleeves and trailed off when he spoke to people he didn’t know and generally avoided everyone but his small group of friends. Everyone knew him, and yet he didn’t know anyone at all. He wouldn’t remember your name for more than a few seconds and Iwaizumi knew it was because he truly didn’t care about human obsessions like names and favorite colors.

He knew volleyball and mediocre grades, but wouldn’t look up from his sleeves long enough to tell you the time of day. Somehow he was popular and well-liked all the same.

So of course he didn’t know Iwaizumi Hajime, who despised talking to people and who liked to sit in the back of the classroom so that he’d be less noticeable.

All the same, Iwaizumi knows well enough what it means to be somebody’s soulmate. He _knows_ there’s a reason that he manages to fall in love with a stranger from afar. There’s something about the noticing that’s better than the doing.

He’s okay with noticing the way that Oikawa always smells like warm vanilla. He doesn’t smell like he uses any kind of fragrance of his own accord, but rather like he always burns a candle of the smell in his house and it’s clung to all of his clothes and has woven it’s way into the complexity of the boy so deeply that it’s stuck. He notices that Oikawa only reads science fiction books that have aliens in them. He notices that Oikawa may not speak to anybody, but when he does he uses his hands and he’s wild and extravagant and makes dumb jokes that make people groan.

He notices how Oikawa Tooru has never noticed him.

Iwaizumi never stopped noticing him.

Even if Oikawa never once glanced his way, Iwaizumi would leave good peer edit reviews on his papers, Iwaizumi casted his vote for Oikawa Tooru for the class presidency, and Iwaizumi contented himself to watching his soulmate from afar while Oikawa kissed girls he barely knew and ditched classes he’d never liked.

Iwaizumi’s a month away from graduating when he notices that Oikawa smells like vanilla honey now all of the sudden.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Iwaizumi kisses a girl before he graduates. She tastes like cigarette smoke and it’s thick and suffocating. The taste of it curls off her lips and rolls off her tongue and into Iwaizumi’s mouth, embedding itself there. When she draws away and takes another drag of it Iwaizumi can still taste it in his mouth.

When he sees Oikawa kiss a girl, chaste and briefly, right before their graduation ceremony, he tastes the cigarette smoke curling off his lips again.

The wind blows Oikawa’s hair out of his face and Iwaizumi notices one last thing before it falls back into place as softly as paper. Oikawa’s eyes are warm and brown and sad-looking.

The wind picks the leaves up off the ground and makes them dance in the air, ruffling skirts and dresses and making everyone fuss with their hair when they sit down.

Oikawa sits in front of Iwaizumi and Iwaizumi can’t help but notice that his hair is ruffled in the back, like somebody’s been twining their hands through it.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

They graduate without saying a single thing to each other over a span of four years, and Iwaizumi’s completely certain that Oikawa doesn’t have the faintest idea who Iwaizumi is, much less that he’s the _Hajime_ that’s tattooed on his arm in soft font.

Iwaizumi doesn’t hear a single thing about Oikawa Tooru for another year and a half, when his name is suddenly popping up all over the internet.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Oikawa’s different online. He’s loud and giggles into his hand a lot, he makes jokes and talks lots and he notices all the little comments on his videos, which are a mix of silly and helpful.

The first time that he mentions his soulmate is in a winged eyeliner tutorial, which Iwaizumi is pretty sure is supposed to be a joke, but Oikawa’s actually pretty amazing at doing eyeliner.

“I’d probably die if I found out this was how my soulmate heard of me,” Oikawa jokes, drawing a perfect line of eyeliner onto his eyelid. “I mean, _yeah_ I’m beautiful, but honestly that would be awkward.”

Iwaizumi realizes for the first time that Oikawa really doesn’t have any clue that he’s done science projects with his soulmates for years. Oikawa _genuinely_ doesn’t know that he sat in the same room as his soulmate--lives _across the street_ from his soulmate.

It’s funny how that works.

It’s funny how Oikawa’s a pinnacle of Iwaizumi’s life. Oikawa Tooru is a constant and an eternity. He was the smell of vanilla honey and he was the color blue and he was volleyball and love and little things.

Funnier yet, how Iwaizumi’s heart could stop and Oikawa would never even know.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“I was so awkward in high school!” Oikawa laughs one morning during a livestream. “I just stared at the ground a lot? Actually, I would always do this thing where I’d start thinking about something and I’d totally space off and just stare at something randomly… I was probably an asshole to some people,” he admits this sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck.

“I’d do projects with people and I’d space off before realizing that they’d introduced themselves and...yeah...I never even knew most of their names? I was too awkward to ask.”

Iwaizumi’s propped his elbows on the desk, resting his head in his hands to watch Oikawa talk. He knows that Oikawa’s across the street from him right now. If Iwaizumi wanted to, he could walk over and crash the whole livestream. He wouldn’t.

Oikawa laughs suddenly, eyes scanning the comments as they appear on the right of the screen. “You’re right--I’d probably meet my soulmate or something and I wouldn’t even notice!”

He’s open online, but Iwaizumi knows that’s not really him either. He’s vain and dorky and rambles on far too long about aliens when he finds somebody willing to listen about them. Online he’s friendly and mature and tells jokes that he knows will make people laugh, but he’s not himself. Iwaizumi is glad that he’s able to know that if not for anything else.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Iwaizumi thinks to himself that he’s no different than the people who are fans, who just like him for the content that he posts and for the person who they think that he is, without knowing a thing about who he’s always been. The only difference is that Iwaizumi has been Oikawa’s fan since before he knew what soulmates were. Maybe this makes him Oikawa’s first fan.

It's a little bit sobering to realize that, realistically, that's all that he's going to be. With that there would be no warmth and no rainy evenings inside watching the rain fall down and hold shape perfectly on the window, there would be no contact or love at all. There wouldn't be much of anything at all from every movie he'd seen and book he'd read where soulmates meet and never say goodbye the way they said hello for the very first time. 

It's because Iwaizumi was never able to bring himself to say hello at all, and he knows this. He knows that they can't ever say goodbye at all if they've never said hello.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

It takes Iwaizumi exactly thirteen years to realize something that he wishes he’d realized long ago. While he knows Oikawa Tooru, Oikawa Tooru will never know him.

Iwaizumi Hajime will never be _nothing_ to Oikawa Tooru, because by fate’s own definition Iwaizumi Hajime is the person of utmost importance to Oikawa, but Iwaizumi will never be _something_ to Oikawa, either.

He will always be a lingering median. He will always been somewhere in the middle of _something_ and _nothing_ to Oikawa. They will never speak, because Oikawa’s off pursuing his already-established career and he’s off at his own college that he picked long ago, and Iwaizumi is off to a college of his own choice, specifically chosen to be a different college than Oikawa.

Iwaizumi’s aware of the fact that he could have just spoken to Oikawa years before now. It wouldn’t have been hard to simply have knocked on the boy’s door or to have persisted when it came to talking to him in class. To be simply put, they were two different people. To have been able to actually approach Oikawa Tooru in school and to have declared such an important thing without being surrounded by others would have been impossible, and to go over to his home would have been somewhat creepy.

Iwaizumi had always liked noticing more than doing.

He had always liked noticing the way that Oikawa’s handwriting looped and drooped, the way that he’d paint his nails with pale colors when they were in their senior year, the way that Oikawa always had ways of getting out of P.E class.

He had enjoyed noticing those things more than the taste of cigarette smoke in the girl’s mouth before their graduation, he had enjoyed those things more than he had enjoyed the kiss itself or the girl herself.

And now he’d give up on the thing that he’d pursued his entire life.

It wasn’t that Oikawa Tooru had consumed his life, or even filled it. But he was there in the same way that your breathing was, constant and guaranteed and necessary. You would never think of denying your lungs of their breathing rights.

But in the same way, Oikawa Tooru was life itself. Impossible and too-challenging and never ending in a way that you wished it wouldn’t be.

Living was nearly impossible in itself. Everybody was existing but nobody was living, and it was inevitable that your time would run out someday without ever having truly lived a day in your life. People could invent any religion they’d like, but in the end it was only a concept created out of fear of the inevitableness of death.

So Iwaizumi accepted the inevitableness. He accepted the reality and the existence and he gave up. Oikawa Tooru had been air, but he hadn’t been the only air supply available. Iwaizumi had watched from afar for thirteen years, but for thirteen years he’d always known that his goal was something out of reach.

So he lets go. A new space in his life opens up, and Iwaizumi can’t tell if it’s a little space or a big space.

All the same, it’s there and it’s a space and life is strange like this but it’s better and it’s freeing and it’s not quite so hopelessly disappointing.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Iwaizumi kisses a girl in his English Literature class not too long after that. He still dislikes the kiss itself, but this time it tastes like something sweet instead of cigarette smoke. He notices that she smells like apple sugar, which was a smell that Oikawa had donned for a span for several months, and it had been one that Iwaizumi had personally favored.

He considers the girl fairly before giving her up as well with a halfhearted excuse and a denial of exchanging phone numbers.

He feels bad, but something tells him that’s not the path for him.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Iwaizumi adopts the cheap coffee shop down the street as his go-to place for coffee runs at one in the morning, and he goes there more often than he’d like to admit when he’s run out of ideas for essays or it’s late enough that he can’t sleep but he knows he’s not going to be able to.

He always gets the same kind of coffee; they’ve memorized his order by his tenth visit within two weeks.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Somebody smokes outside the coffee shop at seven in the morning one day, and Iwaizumi can’t help but think of the girl with the cigarette breath. He realizes, all of the sudden and out of nowhere--like a fall that knocks all the air out of your body-- that he doesn’t even know her name.

For somebody who he seems to remember frequently, she’s a stranger. She’s a complete stranger in the sense that he doesn’t _know_ her, doesn’t know a thing about her other than the fact that she’s a terrible kisser and always smells like a bland mix of cigarettes. He doesn’t know her name. He remembers her vividly, though.

She dressed skimpily, clad in too-short tops and too-short skirts and too-high heels, only in the sense that it was cold and she looked freezing and Iwaizumi watched her and wondered if she was going to trip all morning, because she always looked about five seconds away from teetering off sideways and veering into a bush.

Yet she was a stranger all the same, and Iwaizumi could only hope that if he _were_ a stranger to Oikawa Tooru--and he was, he was a stranger to Oikawa in every sense except the one where Iwaizumi’s name was the one permanently embedded into Oikawa’s skin on his right forearm-- then he could only hope to be the kind of stranger that would stay pressed and fresh at the front of your mind. The kind of stranger that you forgot about all the time, yet couldn’t seem to ever completely forget.

A memory you didn’t even recall remembering.

 

Iwaizumi goes back to the coffee shop at two in the morning, honestly just incredibly grateful that it was even open until this late at night. It opened at late hours in the day, and stayed open until inane hours of the night. This was most likely because it was on a _college campus,_ and everybody on the campus only ever visited the coffee shop _at_ said inane hours of the night, looking half-drunk and sleep-deprived and very tousled.

He goes up to the counter, and a ruffled-looking boy with an abundance of piercings on his face glances at Iwaizumi before he turns around once more and begins to prepare the coffee cup. Iwaizumi accepts the cup when his name is called, and takes his usual seat by the window. A strand of lights hangs above his head and paints the darkwood table a soft yellow.

His laptop is opened in front of him, and the cursor blinks at him without ever moving. A hand appears in front of Iwaizumi’s face.

He glances up to see a boy with messy brown hair and tired brown eyes smiling at him, hand outstretched too-close to Iwaizumi’s face. Iwaizumi accepts the hand anyway, eyebrows raising.

“We went to school together, right?” Oikawa Tooru asks, hand still clasped awkwardly in Iwaizumi’s. Neither of them seems sure of when to _drop_ the handshake, though, so it seemed they were just going to continue holding hands for the rest of the conversation.

“Yeah,” Iwaizumi says, as if he’s just now vaguely recalling this. “We did.”

And Oikawa Tooru introduces himself, and Iwaizumi Hajime introduces himself. Somehow it takes thirteen years of pining and hopeless despair and one night of giving up and accepting fate to stop noticing and finally start doing.

Iwaizumi isn’t going to let him slip away this time; he invites Oikawa Tooru to have coffee with him.

**Author's Note:**

> My Tumblr is [12am](12am.tumblr.com) if you wanna see more from me!! Feedback is greatly appreciated!


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